Letters To The Editor About Israel

October 14, 2006

A complete rebuttal

Reference the op-ed by Fred Carter, "Support for Israel is leading U.S. into another Mideast war," Sept. 30. It was loosely based on the working paper published by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt pushing the same agenda. "Grand conspiracy" is at the heart of the article. Within his first 100 words, Carter asserts "mass deception" and "neocon agents of deception," referring to President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, among others.

He labels Israel "a rogue apartheid state." Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East. Arabs and Christians all vote in Israel. Arabs and Christians are represented in the Knesset (Israel's parliament). Arabs and Christians are entirely free to practice their religious beliefs. Israeli hospitals provide Jews, Christians and Arabs alike with the highest quality medical care. All citizens travel freely. Arabs stay in Jewish hotels, and Jews eat in Arab restaurants.

Israel has proven many times that it has no imperialistic aspirations. An exceptionally tiny country compared to its neighbors, it returned vast quantities of the land it captured in 1967 in exchange for peace with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). Further, Israel offered almost all of the West Bank, and all of Gaza, in exchange for peace with the Palestinian Authority. Yasser Arafat said "no." He offered no compromises. He simply ordered a campaign of suicide bombings. Hundreds of innocent civilians riding buses and eating at restaurants were brutally murdered. Then came the fence.

The fence is a high-tech border fence. It imprisons no one. Palestinians are free to go wherever they please, just not into Israel to murder its citizens. (The fence is similar to the one that the United States will soon be building along its southern border.)

The writer's final claim that "There were no suicide bombers until absolute hopelessness pervaded the Arab cause" is easily disproved. Suicide attacks as a tactic of war date back to the 11th century. In World War II, Japanese pilots used kamikaze against our armed forces. And suicide bombers operate far outside of the Middle East (e.g., the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka). It is, however, correct to say that there have been practically no successful suicide bombings inside Israel since the border fence was erected.

The writer encourages his readers to "Google" the Mearsheimer and Walt article. I would invite readers to "Google" "Debunking the Jewish Conspiracy," by Alan Dershowitz, the distinguished Harvard University professor, for a point-by-point rebuttal.

Roy Lasris

Seaford

Israel seeks peace

Fred Carter's views about Israel are uninformed and patently inaccurate ("Support for Israel is leading U.S. into another Mideast war," Sept. 30).

The fact that Carter recommends "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," the paper by professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard, says enough. The Mearsheimer-Walt essay is a 41-page, amateurish and biased critique of Israel, American Jews and American policy.

Nowhere in evidence is a sense of complexity, balance, an examination of the variety of factors that cause an event, or of putting individual comments in perspective. It is a classic. Conspiratoria.l anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control

Carter also accuses Israel of being an "apartheid state," ignoring that Israel is a vibrant democracy for all of its citizens -- Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze and others -- and is surrounded by a sea of Arab states where freedom and democracy as we know it is virtually nonexistent. Comparisons linking Israeli policies to those of apartheid South Africa are odious and false.

The only true barrier to peace in the region is the refusal of Israel's neighbors to accept it as a permanent state in the region. Israel has consistently shown it stands ready for peace.

David C. Friedman

Regional Director, Anti-Defamation League,

Washington D.C.

Wrong analogy

Reference Fred Carter's Sept. 30 op-ed, "Support for Israel is leading U.S. into another Mideast war." Carter is certainly entitled to his opinion, but his assertions are ludicrous and cannot be supported by the facts.

Obviously Carter is filled with hatred for the current administration in Washington and has bought into the Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell blather. But worst of all, his attempt to draw a parallel between Southern black folk, who believed in a loving God who offered a path to heaven by grace, and the militant Islamic terrorists, who believe they'll get their ticket punched by strapping a bomb to a child and detonating it in a crowd of innocent bystanders, is offensive and reprehensible.

Mark Miller

Yorktown

Fair to Palestinians

God help us if we all become as naive as Helen Holden ("Be fair to Palestinians," Oct. 9). Israel has bent over backwards to try to resolve the decades-old conflict with the Palestinians.

In fact, during former President Bill Clinton's presidency, Israel tried to give them nearly every concession they asked for, but in his infinite wisdom, Nobel laureate Yasser Arafat refused to accept it -- much to the relief of the Israelis.

The Palestinian government has been unable (or unwilling) to stand up to Hamas and the other terrorists who continue to call for the utter destruction of Israel. To suggest that the Palestinians have not been given a fair chance, or that the UN could somehow settle this dispute, is downright foolish.

Rather than point the finger at Israel, Arab nations need to ask themselves why they won't accept any of the Palestinian immigrants into their country.